An Accusation!

anne - good ploy or dya meenitt ?

No. of 'Classic or Dud' threads started in 2002 (and categorised by the moderators) = 110 approx.
Of these, no. about black people making music post 1978 = 10 approx.

Anyway, who are these artists of whom you speak that are not being represented on ILX? Because I want to hear them (& right now ILX is my avenue of broadening my taste, in conjunction w/ some historical books and whatever the radio plays).

My other comments, v.quickly cos I have a report to finish and shopping to do - ILM has a big bias towards how the listener consumes music and experiences it, rather than how the artist perhaps is marketed or fits into wider media culture. So the minstrel argument is kind of off-base because nobody here actually is I think listening to, say, Ludacris, and thinking "Ludacris is a representative of blackness". Because I think most of the white people here don't really think much about 'blackness' as a category, whether because they don't think racially or because they're complacent, probably a chunk of both.

In other words we're not consuming Ludacris as a cartoon of blackness, we're consuming him as a cartoon of violence and sexuality who happens to be black in the same way that Eminem or Vince Neil happen to be white. And if consuming cartoons is a bad thing in itself, then pretty much most of pop history is wiped out - the Afro- delia pushed by Outkast, the sensitive womanhood pushed by Alicia, the coolness pushed by the Strokes, the party-ness pushed by WK, are cartoons as well as all the myriad 'realnesses' of hip-hop. And to this suburban Oxford listener, ALL of it is a huge multi-frame cartoon of America. My hunch is that saying 'minstrel show' in the way you mean it loses its sting because all of popular culture is already a 'minstrel show' - stereotypes are presented, exaggerated, sold back, and sometimes yes this makes for incredible art.

(I suppose what I'm saying, too, is - choose better targets. Black/white music is one of the less problematic areas of ILM, certainly of my music taste too. For instance I hate Alicia Keys, who is black, and I hate Dido, who is white, in exactly the same way - because what's actually going on is a projection and rejection by me not of blackness but of aspects of 'the feminine' (or the qualities presented as 'feminine' to me). And my current love of the trashiness and vigour of Bollywood is much much much more racially based and racially suspect than any of the rap/R&B discourse we get on ILM.)

Sterling: I will try to answer you. but I don't really know what you've heard. I will say that I think So So Def is the most ignored record label on ILM.

OTM!!!!!!!

Oops, I sure did. How the hell did that happen? (My wife and I were just talking the other day about how great it is that Mary J. is making great music again.)

Even if we are thinking racially about music, the minstrel-question in its American hip-hop manifestation merits barely a 'pfft' in my everyday life and listening compared to the ways Jamaican culture is racially interpreted and transmitted here - and the reggae and dancehall discussions here, while generally pretty basic and sparsely- attended, don't fall nearly so much into the traps she's outlining, I think (mostly because they're basic and sparsely-attended, granted).

i) ILM isn't an American message board, either.

ii) You didn't specify "American" in either complaint, you specified "black people".

You're right, though, I don't have much to add to your specific points other than 'your analysis doesn't work except in an American context, which ILM isn't purely' - and I've made that point so I'll duck out now.

i don't completely buy yr violence argt, but that's because *i* always talk abt the pistols in this regard (and a bit eminem, tho not the latter recently at all much)

the minstrel commnent was a bit of a red herring, i do believe it though. Tom, do you think black artists are better suited for exaggerations of violence and stupidity?

No: pretty much the only way I can counter this is by listing 'white' artists and styles I like because of the cartoon violence and/or stupidity - Andrew WK, G'n'R, some other punk and rock, happy hardcore, gabba techno.

if not then why do you like quiet inoffensive indie rock as representations but not the rap and R&B counterparts?

But I don't. I like the Smiths and Belle And Sebastian and loathe vast vast tracts of other indie music. And for further grist to my it's-not-blackness-it's-Americanness mill, I *do* like "quiet inoffensive" hip-hop by black people, it just happens to often be by black British people because, as with the indie I do listen to, I'm looking for recognition of shared experience in the representation as well as portrayal of alien experience.

if Jill Scott is the Janeane Garofalo of R&B (left-of- mainstream quirky "fat" girl), shouldn't that mean you would like her a lot more? or does that only work with Missy? (but then there's the Reynolds thing again)

No, because for one thing I don't like a lot of Missy's stuff beyond the singles. But also that's not how it works - I don't listen purely for tokenism or 'representation' and nor I suspect does anyone else. This is the kind of logic Ethan was using the other week when he was 'arguing' that because people here liked pretty melodies and 4/4 beats in one form of music (hip-hop, according to him), we 'ought to' like them in another form of music (techno) - you concentrate on a similarity and ignore the differences which might actually be the determinants of liking. I would be more specific with Garaofolo or Scott but I don't know the former's music at all and the latter's I barely know.

I think this is somewhat bogus. first of all, it definitely isn't a question of race. second, this hiphop/r&b form is actually massively popular right now. It is the dominant mainstream genre now in fact (at least in the US). There is always a reaction against current mainstream stuff in elitist/critic type circles such as ILM (reasons for why i'm sure have been hashed over before but it probably can be attributed to psychology). So if "artists working in the hiphop/r&b form itself, are held to higher standards..." it is actually only a result of their general success.

AS for myself, i have concrete and non-race related reasons why I don't enjoy most current r'n'b hiphop nu-soul, whatever. I find the vocal stylings quite affected and overwrought. I don't the general lack of actual instruments (ie production techniques). I don't have these problems with traditional soul/r'n'b, some of which I quite enjoy. Of course some of it was quite mainstream in it's day, so who knows how nu-soul will be viewed in a forum like ILM once it has obtained "classic" status...

Hippie.

ps. I like Maxwell and D'Angelo. Therefore they != Nu-soul.

you are swingbeat or have been related to swingbeat = you are not nu- soul.

d'angelo can fuck right off, the girlfriend-tempting tart.

(ps i love d'angelo and maxwell and they are both entirely nu-soul)

what about covering NIN then, smart guy? alicia keys live from the death factory.

Yeah but in ILM itself the relationship with the mainstream has generally been much more conflicted (which is what this thread has been about really).

i like present-day R&B *more* than 60s or 70s soul (though NOT more than early 50s R&B, which i think it has a lot more in common with, attitude and content-wise)

SOULIST!

classic!

I believe that ILM, as a whole, is either overlooking, hating baselessly, or being dumb and patronizing to almost all music created and consumed by most black people today.

The phrase by most black people is supposed to give the sentence moral authority that I don't think it earns. It implies "ILx should pay attention/pay respect to [x] because [y] does," something I don't buy at all. Just because [y] likes something, where [y] = black people, teenagers, boho-types, gay men, bloggers, etc. means little unless one is a historian or a self- avowed critiquer of everything under the sun. In fact, my mind recoils from the very idea, because in these arguments usually the [y] is in fact a gross simplification of [y].

I didn't realize that ILx all of a sudden had this great overarching responsibility to be a flawless mirror of the world of music. I also hadn't noticed any Outkast-bashing as of late: "Bombs Over Baghdad" won FGIII and "Ms. Jackson" came within a hairs' breadth of winning FGIV, right? As for a lot of the characterizations that have been offered of ILx, seriously or semi-seriously, I can only shrug -- I haven't really noticed any peculiar attitudes about black music on ILx as a whole. Then again, I miss a lot. I personally remember talking about it more back when Fred Solinger still posted here, because we both have roughly the same R&B background. Fred, where are you when we neeed yoooouuuu?!

One moment of personal affirmation: I'm not indie. I don't think I've ever been indie, except for that weird moment in my life when I was obssessed with Sebadoh.